New Folklore Historian Focuses on Oral and Institutional Histories

Oral history, biography, and
institutional history receive attention with this volume of the Folklore Historian.Simon Bronner in his article on the
Collecting Memories: Voices in Print digital collection suggests why few oral
histories of folklorists have been published and what they do contribute to our
knowledge of folklore history, folklore futures, and folklorists’ motivations
and life’s work.Additionally, we
publish portions of an interview conducted for the Collecting Memories project
with Randy Williams and Barre Toelken.This interview shares the anecdotes, actual fieldwork techniques, and
personal knowledge of the field noted in Bronner’s article.

I am delighted that this volume includes two
papers associated with the 2010 AFS forum "Folklore’s ‘Greatest Generation’:
Reflections on the Past and Future of Folklore Studies” organized by Bronner
and sponsored by the Fellows of the American Folklore Society.Michael Owen Jones’s detailed, thoughtful
institutional history of the UCLA Folklore and Mythology Center and Program
should be required reading for graduate students and all folklorists who need
to foster and maintain institutional ties for their folklore work.Lee Haring’s tribute to Francis Lee Utley
confirms the possibilities for folklore study when an astute scholar
understands how to work across disciplines, departments, and fields.All of these contributions indicate, the
study of traditional expression serves best when the knowledge of traditional
expressivity honors the voice of the people.